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Big Mistake: Making Fun Of Hashtags Instead Of Using Them

The following search result appeared on the top-right of the Google search results page when searching: #forbes. (Screen capture from Google.com)

Earlier this year FacebookFacebook began supporting hashtags (the # symbol immediately preceding a subject or keyword), and at the time I wrote this piece on why businesses should care about them. Today, hashtags are even more important. According to Dan Zarrella, author and social media scientist at HubSpot, a marketing software platform, tweets that contain one or more hashtags were 55% more likely to be retweeted than those that did not include them. These results are based on a dataset analyzing 1.2 million tweets.

This backs information released on Twitter’s blog last year titled “Best practices for journalists” that found when individuals used a hashtag within their tweet, engagement can increase as much as 100%; brands could get an increase of 50%. The reason for this is because a hashtag immediately expands the reach of your tweet beyond just those who follow you, to reach anyone interested in that hashtag phrase or keyword.

While this is extremely compelling, there’s even more reason to get on board. GoogleGoogle is now riding the hashtag train. Yes, Google+ was supporting hashtags before Facebook, but now those hashtags are appearing on the right-hand side of Google’s search results page. Yes, that same area on the search page you would normally have to pay for to get placement.

Google is playing nice with the other networks too—well, at least Twitter and Facebook. Those sites get a link that takes the visitor directly to the search pages on each respective site. Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and Pinterest will have to wait their turn.

Supporting Google+ hashtag results on the search page makes sense for Google, since it incentivizes people to use the Google+ platform by offering up prime real estate and exposure. There is a catch, of course. The hashtag search does not work for every query and even when they do appear only about a half dozen get displayed—and never more than two at a time (the results automatically scroll in and out of view). The results themselves can show the number of people who have clicked the + button and also how many comments a particular post has received.

It’s easy to make fun of hashtags just as Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake have, but lets not forget that on Twitter hashtags were a user-born feature. Hashtags have become the social web’s way of filtering a conversation and gathering the masses. There’s a reason TV shows promote their own hashtags and that the leader of the free world uses them to rally conversations.

Another way to look at it is this. Does anyone think Twitter, Google+ or Facebook will disappear in 5-10 years? I doubt it. Does anyone believe any of these social media platforms will turn off the hashtag functionality? I doubt it. And as ridiculous as hashtags might seem to marketing veterans who remember a time before Twitter and Facebook, the younger generation and potential customers/clients don’t. To them, using hashtags is as natural and common as typing their query into the search box—and with Google’s new addition now they will.

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May I suggest trying RiteTag – in which you search from words, brands, names, OR hashtags you know, and see related hashtags, who’s using them, how many times each, the density of tweets (over time) and from these indicators, you decide which hashtags to add to a tweet with a click – to test. Then, RiteTag watches for you what you get: retweets, link clicks, favorites, and you get suggestions later (“My top-performing tags,” in RiteTag’s Tag Optimizer), and refine to using those that are actually the best – for both engaging your followers and reaching beyond them.

Great article Steve, good follow up to your ’5 reasons business should care about hashtags’article.

I especially like this comment ‘And as ridiculous as hashtags might seem to marketing veterans who remember a time before Twitter and Facebook, the younger generation and potential customers/clients don’t. To them, using hashtags is as natural and common as typing their query into the search box’

It helps some like me who are from an older generation to put these things into perspective, into this is how it is mode.